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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [VOTE] Deprecations for PHP 8.1
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Tommins)

On 05/07/2021 12:39, Mike Schinkel wrote:
>   know that you, and others on this list, have chosen to define deprecation as including removal, but that is actually not the accepted definition on the web, nor is it in any way a requirement, it is just your preference.


I stand corrected, I had not encountered contexts where it was defined 
differently.


To be clear, I don't think contrasting "accepted definition" against "my 
preference" is quite right here; there are plenty of places that 
document the definition I am familiar with, e.g.

* Foldoc (taken from the Jargon File): http://foldoc.org/deprecated
* Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deprecated

Removal is also specifically mentioned in official documentation for 
plenty of PHP projects, e.g.

* The description of the "@deprecated" tag in PhpDocumentor : 
https://docs.phpdoc.org/3.0/guide/references/phpdoc/tags/deprecated.html
* The general migration guide for Symfony : 
https://symfony.com/doc/current/setup/upgrade_major.html#make-your-code-deprecation-free
* The Drupal Core deprecation policy: 
https://www.drupal.org/about/core/policies/core-change-policies/drupal-core-deprecation-policy


More directly relevant, the PHP manual at 
https://www.php.net/manual/en/errorfunc.constants.php currently 
describes E_DEPRECATED as:

 > Run-time notices. Enable this to receive warnings about code that 
will not work in future versions.

Obviously, that could be changed to also include "features that are 
strongly discouraged but not currently planned for removal", but I'm 
still not convinced that that would be a useful change.

If we can create and document a good alternative for strftime(), then 
why *not* mark it for future removal. And if we can't provide that 
alternative, what use is there in notices discouraging it?

Regards,

-- 
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]